Where to begin. This was one of those bizarre, other-worldly interviews where I couldn't really process the absurdity of it while it was happening, but as soon as I walked out the door I felt like I had been hit by a figurative sledgehammer.
Firmani's internship interview process is a bit of an atypical one where Mark Firmani interviews you himself as opposed to the other associates in his agency who you would actually be working with for the most part. Still, since the internship opportunity had room for advancement, I thought it was cool that figurehead himself had such a hands-on approach.
What a character he was. Stern but well-spoken, he didn't hold back any punches when it came to questions and interview topics. Unfortunately, many of his questions and claims were either rude, discriminatory, offensive, or some combination of the above.
A couple examples:
1) Right off the bat, he reiterated my (very foreign) last name and asked me where I was from, right down to the ethnicity. (The icing on the cake was when he talked about his negative experiences with people from there.)
2) He asked me my age.
3) He went ahead and tore apart my appearance, commenting on my beard (a very short and trimmed beard, not anything wild/lumberjack-like) and mentioned how that kind of style had no place in the "business world."
Furthermore, when I asked him more about the digital marketing aspects of his agency's work, he dismissed my interest in it, referring to the then-current person who handled digital marketing for the firm as a "nerd" and remarked that "trust me, you don't want to go down that path." He also noted that he wasn't sold on "this whole social media thing."
It's a good thing that this agency's client base consists largely of legal clients, because because I have a feeling that Mark is going to need them one day. Rude to his interviewees and speaking ill of his current employees? Seems like a place where lack of HR has festered into a very poisonous environment.
